MP slams Ukraine’s sanctions against Russian social networks as ‘destructive’

Date of publication: 16 05 2017, 14:03

Ukraine’s sanctions against Russian mass media outlets, social networks and news portals are destructive and have no legal basis, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) Committee for Foreign Affairs Leonid Slutsky told reporters on Tuesday.

“This is incredible, inhuman and totally unreasonable, and does not have any legal basis,” Slutsky stressed. “Everything is done to forcibly break Ukraine’s citizens from Russia’s information space.”

“Our history and our culture have been developing together for many centuries, and we have a lot of relatives and friends. I’ll stress once again that such measures are destructive and unlawful,” he said.

“No matter how they try, using artificial means, to divorce peoples and marginalize Russia in the Ukrainians’ mind, our peoples won’t be divorced,” Slutsky said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko brought into effect a decision made by the country’s National Security and Defense Council on introducing sanctions against popular Russian social networks Vkontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki (Classmates), and also e-mail services Mail.ru and Yandex. Internet providers in Ukraine will block access to these websites.

Vkontakte is the largest and most popular social networking website both in Russia and Ukraine. Odnoklassniki ranks fifth in popularity in these countries. Both websites were founded in 2006 and belong to Mail.Ru Group Russian Internet company.